One
of the 20th centuries crimes against
humanity has been the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
The Holocaust, The genocides in Rwanda , Darfur and
Croatia have received International attention but
the slow and steady destruction of Tibetan culture
in Tibet continues. In October 1950 the Peoples
Liberation Army crossed the Yangtse river and soon
occupied Lhasa. In March 1959
the entire population of Lhasa
revolted against the Chinese troops to save their
revered leader. The Dalai Lama secretly made the
long, arduous journey to India guarded only by a
handful of bodyguards seen in the accompanying
picture, where he was immediately

The Dalai Lama's bodyguards from 50 years ago granted
asylum. Since then exactly 50 years ago he has been
conducting a largely peaceful battle for Tibetan
Independence and even acceptance of Chinese
Nationhood to preserve Tibetan culture and religion.
He lives in Dharamsala with a Tibetan government in
exile and his spiritual strength and single minded
efforts in the cause of the Tibetan people have won
him International sympathy and The Nobel Peace Prize
but no recognition of the rights of the Tibetan
people.

Claude Arpi will speak about the circumstances of
the ‘Flight of the Century’, the reactions in India
and abroad and will look at the Tibetan cause fifty
years after 50 years of exile.

Claude Arpi is French-born author and
journalist who lives in Auroville,
India.
He has interviewed many eminent
personalities including the Dalai Lama. His most
recent books include Tibet: The Lost Frontier
(2008), India and Her Neighbourhood: A French
Observer's Views (2005), Born in Sin: The
Panchsheel Agreement (2004), The Fate of
Tibet: When Small Insects Eat Big Insect (1999).

For
the first 500 years the teachings of the Buddha were
primarily oral. Only when Buddhism reached China
during the Han dynasty were the oral teachings
transmitted, transcribed and then translated into
Chinese. And the written word became as, if not more
important than the spoken.
As more and more sacred texts were collected, sutra
copying started to become a sacred practice. Michele
will introduce the different calligraphic styles
that were used to copy the Buddhist sutras from the
2nd to the 14th centuries.

Michele Archambault was introduced to Chinese
Calligraphy in the early 1970's while she was
studying Chinese at the Hong Kong University. During
the seventies and eighties she made many trips to
specific sites in China to study stone inscriptions
and gather material relating to calligraphy. She
also travelled to Japan where she met one of the
great Japanese calligraphers, Tejima Sensei, with
whom she kept a close relationship until his death.
For the past 15 years, she has lived in New York
City where she has been privileged to study with one
of the world masters of calligraphy, Professor Zhang
Lung Yan. Her work has been exhibited in his studio
"The White Camellia" and regularly at the China
Institute in NY.

wednesday 8th april
6.30 pm “Left
Behind: Thoughts on Left rule and the forthcoming
elections in West Bengal” a talk by Rudrangshu
Mukherjee

For
long West Bengal has been associated with the Left –
not only with leftist ideas and political movements
but for 32 years the State has been ruled by a
combination of leftist parties led by the CPM.
During the first four years of the United
Progressive Alliance they were influential if
finally destructive players in the decisions of the
Central Government. Now there are straws in the wind
that their long monopoly with the governance of West
Bengal may be changing. As the editor of the opinion
page of The Telegraph for many years Rudrangshu is
most qualified to detect such a shift. Today he will
analyse how it’s success has become its principal
weakness in an election that could prove to be a
real test for the Left in the state.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee is currently editor, editorial
pages of The Telegraph, Calcutta. He is an
historian, teacher and journalist who has worked and
taught at Princeton University, the University of
Manchester and The University of California, Santa
Cruz as well as the University of Calcutta. He has
edited The Penguin Gandhi Reader and Great Speeches
of Modern India and written 4 books on1857 the
latest being Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or
Accidental Hero. He has also worked on the history of
the leftist movement in
India and this talk is perhaps a sequel to an
earlier article ‘Left Baggage’.

saturday 11th
april
7. pm “ Good Hands / Godspeed” two monologues by
Neel Chaudhuri performed by Momo Gosh and Kriti
Pant

Godspeed
received the Toto Funds The Arts Award for Creative
Writing in 2009. To commemorate this prize, The
First City Theatre Foundation presents a single show
of the two monologues, Good Hands / Godspeed,
which were first presented at The Attic in
July-August 2008.

In Good Hands, a young man presents a slide
show of ‘unsung superheroes’, highlighting their
elemental virtues and narrating short episodes from
their adventures. It was written for and is
performed by an actor who loves comic books with
unfeigned vigour. In Godspeed, a girl cleans
up a room that belonged to a boy who died, finding
comfort in songs from his music collection. It was
transplanted from an abandoned idea by a
writer-friend, and written for and performed by an
actress who loves songs.

What
is happiness? Where can it be found? How do you make
it last? Those questions have baffled researchers
for years. And yet, everything we do—work, play,
love, raise a family—are all ultimately attempts to
find happiness.

This talk will explore some of the latest
international research on happiness and also share
some simple but surprisingly powerful tools for
happiness that can be found within the heart of
Indian spiritual traditions. Once understood, these
can be applied at both, a corporate and personal
level to live a significantly happier, less
stressful and more meaningful life. Simran Bhargava
has a Masters in Communication from Stanford
University. She was writer and editor with the
India Today group for several years. She now
has her own weekly television show on NDTV called “One
Life To Love” which aims to help viewers lead a
happier and freer life. She has also recently done
a six-part series for NDTV on "Happiness: A journey
with Deepak Chopra"

friday 17th april
6.30 pm ‘Concerto Grosso’ - an illustrated talk by
Punita Singh - as part of The Attic’s
Divertimento Music Appreciation Series

The
‘concerto grosso’ evolved as a music performance
genre during the late 17th century, with
eminent composers of the Baroque period writing
major works that contrasted sections played by a
small group of solo instrumentalists with those
played by the larger orchestra.

Popularized by composers such as
Stradella, Corelli and Vivaldi in Italy, the style
was adopted by other European composers such as Bach
and Handel and developed further to contrast the
performance of a single soloist with the orchestra.
Such performances allowed virtuoso playing by the
soloist to be displayed in sharp focus and led to
the concerto form emerging as one of the staples of
the western classical music repertoire. In this
presentation, Dr Punita Singh will present audio and
video excerpts of some concerti grossi and discuss
the special features of the style and its influence
on later composers of the Classical, Romantic and
Modern periods.

Punita is a musicologist, linguist,
psychoacoustician, editor and educator based in New
Delhi. Special areas of interest and expertise
include Christian sacred music, music of the
Renaissance, twentieth-century music, Flamenco, and
contrastive aspects of Indian and Western classical
music.

monday 20th april
6.30 pm Mayawati “The
new face of Indian politics” a talk by Ajoy Bose

How
did Mayawati, a studious, diffident Dalit
schoolteacher, the summit of whose ambitions was to
be an IAS officer, become the iconoclastic,
combative politician, universally known as Behenji
today? With her in-your-face political style,
unabashed display of accumulated wealth and
mercurial nature, she is, perhaps, the most
enigmatic Indian politician for decades. Possibly
her greatest achievement has been to forge, with the
help of her mentor, Kanshi Ram, a completely new
context for Dalit politics. Bypassing both the
slogans of victimhood, as well as those of
street-level activism, she has negotiated from
within the system to create new alliances with lower
backward castes, Muslims and now, surprisingly,
upper-caste Brahmins as well.

Eminent journalist Ajoy Bose brings his in-depth
experience of covering Indian politics for over
three decades to a pioneering political biography of
Mayawati. He explores the background of her meteoric
rise and examines the growing national clout of this
unique woman who could, quite possibly, determine
the shape of the next Indian government, and even be
the country’s prime minister one day.

Ajoy Bose, has been associated for over three and a
half decades with a wide range of media at home and
abroad. During the 1998 national elections he
co-hosted along with Vinod Dua and Mark Tully the
popular television poll programme Chunauv Chunauti.
In 2004, he along with Arati Jerath produced a
weekly foreign affairs television show Global
Challenges on Doordarshan News. He has written three
books, the latest of which is Behenji – a
political biography of Mayawati (2008).

Haruki Murakami is Japan's most important and
internationally acclaimed living writer. Since 1979,
and his first novel Hear the Wind Sing, he
has written more than 35 works of fiction and
nonfiction in his native language and translated
more than 30 titles from English into Japanese.
Dauntingly prolific and almost aggressively healthy,
he swims and runs daily, and has run marathons in
New York, Boston and Sapporo. He is in bed by 9 p.m.
and up at 4. "You need power to be a good writer,"
he once explained.

The
First City Theatre Foundation reads excerpts from
his novels, stories and non-fiction writing.